Friday, December 07, 2012

Free-Market Analysis: War is a cruel and ugly business. The longer it continues, the worse it gets and the more apt atrocities are to become accepted and even justified.

Now US Marines appear to be justifying the killing of "enemy" children. The frustration is palpable and one can, of course, understand and even sympathize with Marines within the context of current combat.

They are stuck in an implacably hostile environment pursuing a war that has no justification to attain a result that is not comprehensible.

And as they pursue this unfulfillable mission, they are being shot at, blown up and otherwise harassed. And what's the difference, really, whether the bullet comes from a 12-year-old or a 24-year-old? An enemy is an enemy.

We can see the justifications at work in this article in the Military Times justifying, even defending, the killing of kids. Here's some more:

The incident underscores a continuing problem across Afghanistan. The use of children by the Taliban — through recruitment and as human shields — complicates coalition forces' efforts to eliminate enemy fighters from the battlefield without angering civilians.

The New York Times reported that the dead children's family members said they had been sent to gather dung, which farmers use for fuel. Taliban fighters were laying the bombs near the children, who were mistakenly killed, they said.

Regardless, it's one of many times the children have been involved in the war. In a case this year, Afghan National Police in Kandahar province's Zharay district found two boys, ages 9 and 11, with a male 18-year-old carrying 1-liter soda bottles full of enough potassium chlorate to kill coalition forces on a foot patrol.

So now the US military has extended the field of battle to children. The Times article, which the Military Times quotes, presents a figure of "316 documented cases of underage recruitment in the war last year, most of them attributed to the Taliban and other armed groups like the Haqqani network, according to a U.N. report released in April."

On its face, the US response is logical. Children, no matter how small, can convey and trigger deadly weapons. The NY Times reports, "Eleven children, including an 8-year-old girl, were killed in Afghanistan last year carrying out suicide attacks."

But what is logical tactically is merely multiplied insanity when the big picture is viewed.

As we and other alternative media publications have pointed out, there is no reason for the US to be Afghanistan in the first place. Thousands of young men and women have been killed, even greater numbers have committed suicide and tens of thousands have been maimed for life.

And the end is not in sight. The US has been ever more consistently militarized and the effect of the war has been to distort the domestic political situation, as well. The claim that President Barack Obama killed Osama bin Laden last year is simply not believable, in our humble view. We've written about it a lot. Just search the 'Net.

What is perhaps even more terrible, in fact, is that the US continues to use depleted uranium weapons in Afghanistan. The fine, radioactive dust continues to cause birth defects in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.

The toll of this ridiculous war can be measured by the lies it has spawned, by its incipient genocide, by the physical ruin of young men and women on both sides of the war and now by the use of children as combatants and what may become a deliberate policy of targeting children by the US military.

Nobody wins such a war. There is not an iota of justification for it. It is literally poisoning the body politic of the US and its long-term legacy will be civil war in Afghanistan and increased authoritarianism in the US and throughout the West.

Conclusion: These are no doubt the results that the power elite seeks as it attempts to formalize what seems to be an intention to create world rule. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion it is a kind of satanic, sociopathic cult.